Inventor of Electronic Nose Named One of World's Top Scientists

Published on August 19, 2008 at 11:41 PM

Dr. Hossam Haick of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has been named
by Technology Review as one of the world's 35 top young scientists.

Dr. Haick was selected for inclusion in list known as the "TR35"
from more than 300 nominees by a panel of expert judges and editorial staff
at Technology Review, M.I.T.'s magazine of innovation. He and the other winners
will be featured in the September issue of the magazine and honored at M.I.T.'s
EmTech08 Conference to be held September 23-25, 2008.

"The TR35 honors young innovators for accomplishments that are poised
to have a dramatic impact on the world as we know it," said Jason Pontin,
editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review. "We celebrate their
success and look forward to their continued advancement of technology in their
respective fields."

Already the recipient of several prestigious awards and grants, Dr. Haick has
garnered broad international recognition for leading the development of an "electronic
nose," a device consisting of nano-sized sensors that can detect cancer
in a person's breath, which could greatly improve survival rates via critical
early diagnoses.

"The preliminary results of this device indicate that it currently detects
breast, colon and lung cancer. We hope that in the future it will be a routine
screening for all cancers, thereby guaranteeing early treatment," said
Dr. Haick.

He is the first Israeli scientist to win the European Union's Marie Curie Excellence
Grant, and in March was honored by the president of France with the France-Israel
Foundation Prize for Excellence in Science. Among his other academic honors
are a Fulbright fellowship and inclusion on the European Union's List of 300
Top Young Scientists.

Born and raised in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Nazareth, Dr. Haick received
his doctorate from the Technion and pursued post-doctoral research at the California
Institute of Technology. He currently holds the position of senior lecturer
in the Technion Faculty of Chemical Engineering and the university's Russell
Berrie Nanotechnology Institute.

Past winners of the TR35 include Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page,
Linus Torvald, the developer and founder of Linux, and Facebook creator Mark
Zuckerberg.